This week on the TT Show, Lord of the Rings superfan (and also superfan) Jak and Kosta discuss Peter Jackson returning to The Lord of the Rings franchise with the new movie 'The Hunt for Gollum.' They discuss the potential story, timeline, and their hopes for a return to the magic of the original trilogy. And not, you know, The Hobbit.

Another big story this week is Apple's apologizing for its seemingly tone-deaf iPad Pro advertisement that quickly caused a massive wave of negative backlash. Is it as bad as some of the comments? As a fan of retro hardware who doesn't like seeing it get destroyed, Kosta thinks so, while Jak is more on the fence and 'meh.'

And it wouldn't be an episode of The TT Show without GPU news, with all of the latest GeForce RTX 50 Series, Radeon, and Intel graphics talk bundled into a new section of the podcast called 'GPU Corner.' Speaking of new sections, Jak and Kosta play a round of Guess the Headline for some fun.

Taiwanese lawmakers are reconsidering the current regulations of nuclear power in the country that would heavily help TSMC.

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) consumes most of the power generated in Taiwan, with the Taiwanese national legislature, the Executive Yuan, showed willingness to change laws after the new economic minister succeeding Weng Mei-hua, J.W. Kuo, said in the Executive Yuan that he thought nuclear energy was a clean power source.

The outgoing government has been stalling the increase of the share of nuclear power on Taiwan's national power grid, with data from national regulator TaiPower showing nuclear power makes up less than 7% of Taiwan's total energy. The recent comments regarding nuclear power regulation changes were made by outgoing NDC minister, Kung Ming-hsin, just as his government was handing power over to its successors.

Samsung and SK hynix are looking into 1c DRAM as the key to next-generation HBM4 competitiveness, with Samsung considering changing the DRAM to 1c DRAM for its HBM4, with South Korean rival SK hynix (who is working with TSMC for HBM4) also looking at 1c DRAM for its new HBM4 memory.

HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) is memory that features multiple DRAMs stacked vertically, connected with TSV (Through Silicon Via), so the performance of the DRAM product on the HBM memory, greatly affects the performance of HBM. Samsung was initially planning to use 1b DRAM, a 10-nano class 5th-generation DRAM, to HBM4.

1b DRAM has a linewidth of 12nm, with Samsung starting mass production of 1b DRAM in May 2023, with Samsung's HBM3E memory using 1a DRAM. ZDNet Korea reports that Samsung has established a new plan internally to change the DRAM inside of its future-gen HBM4 to 1c DRAM, with competitors like SK hynix and Micron using 1b DRAM in their respective HBM3E, HBM4 is interpreted as a steategy to take the lead of its competitors in the front-end process area.

AMD's next-gen Zen 5 processors will be launched at Computex 2024 next month, while next-next-gen Zen 6 processors are being teased with 32 cores per CCD.

In some new posts on X from leakers "Kepler_L2" and "InstLatX64" we're discovering the Zen 5 and Zen 6 core configurations, with Zen 5 hitting in just a few weeks time. Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores are expected to both be smaller than existing Zen 4 cores, which means there'll be more room to fire more CCDs on the CPU package.

Western Digital has announced a new portable HDD expansion across its WD, WD_BLACK, and SanDisk Professional product lineups with the world's highest storage capacity in a 2.5-inch portable HDD at a huge 6TB.

The new WD My Passport portable HDD, WD_BLACK P10 Game Drive, and SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE ArmorARD will all now be available in 6TB capacities. The new WD My Passport 6TB drive comes with the latest USB-C connectivity, and a modern metal design. The out-of-the-box experience is easy, with a convenient and slim form factor that fits almost anywhere... with 6TB in your pocket.

The 6TB WD My Passport Ultra and 6TB WD My Passport Ultra for Mac both retail for $199.99 MSRP. The 6TB WD My Passport and WD My Passport for Mac both retail for $179.99 MSRP. The 6TB WD My Passport, Works with USB-C retails for $184.99 MSRP. All products are available now at select Western Digital retailers, e-tailers and on the Western Digital Store

ORIGIN PC has just launched its latest gaming laptops with the introduction of the new EON16-SX, NSX-16, NSL-14, and NSL-16.

The new ORIGIN PC EON16-SX laptop features Intel's latest Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" CPUs, designed for the generation of AI with their built-in NPU and Intel AI Boost technology for AI workloads. ORIGIN PC's four new gaming laptops have all passed MIL-STD-810H-SPEC standards, passing extensive stress tests including extreme temperatures, humidity, shock, and more.

The new EON16-SX and NSX-16 gaming laptops fuse high-performance and portability, weighing just 4.29lbs and just 0.77 inches thin. Inside, they pack the new Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor (16 cores, 22 threads) with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 that's been tuned for a TGP of 105W, a 16-inch 2560 x 1600 resolution display at 240Hz, up to 16TB of SSD storage, and up to 64GB of DDR5 memory.

A few of Apple's high-level executives have 'secretly' visited TSMC, with Apple wanting to secure TSMC's first batch of 2nm production capacity.

Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams met with TSMC president Wei Zhejia, with Apple wanting the first batches of 2nm production capacity, but TSMC benefits big time with NT$600 billion (around $18.6 billion USD or so), which is a new high for the Taiwanese contract chip manufacturer.

Apple has been working closely with TSMC for many years now, with the A-series processors used in iPhones, the long-term plan for the M-series processors inside of the latest iPads and MacBook laptops, with the "key driver" behind this being Apple COO Jeff Williams. The new wave of package production capacity and cooperation with TSMC for Apple's self-developed AI chips, is a very important step.

I've gotta say, I would never do this myself... but I really do love seeing modded graphics cards like this. NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card has been modded, with 24Gbps and 26Gbps GDDR6X memory.

A competition was recently held in Brazil between the Paulo Gomes and TecLab teams, with the competition involving swapping out the VRAM on the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card with faster memory, and overclocking it to its absolute limits.

NVIDIA ships the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER graphics card with 21Gbps GDDR6X memory modules, with NVIDIA using Micron 21Gbps GDDR6X dies (161-0479-900) were swapped, and modded, with 24Gbps GDDR6X dies (161-0480-900).

South Korea has plans to build an AI semiconductor innovation center in the heart of Silicon Valley, USA.

The Korean Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) said on Wednesday that it would take applications up until the end of this month for those who wished to reside at the planned center, reports TheElec. A committee will review the applications next month, with those who pass to start moving in in August.

The new project kicked off in April, with the aim of forming research platforms in the United States and China, with the Ministry of Trade working with industry associations including KSIA for the project. A KSIA spokesperson told TheElec that the "center will give independent offices for three to four companies and also have a large, open space to house other companies".

This year's Call of Duty game, which is expected to be Black Ops 6 and take place during the Gulf War, will launch on Xbox Game Pass, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. Publication Reuters has also corroborated the reports.

The upper limits of Xbox Game Pass will soon be tested as Microsoft plans to roll out Call of Duty, one of the world's most popular video game franchises, onto the subscription service. Inside sources have told two major news outlets that this year's new Call of Duty title will be released onto Game Pass on day one.

The move has caused speculation and doubt among gamers who question the financial viability of the service, despite multiple clarifications from Xbox management that Game Pass is not only profitable, but sustainable. Our own calculations indicate that Game Pass made as much as $1.887 billion in revenues throughout calendar year 2021, and up to $1.796 billion in 2022.

While we expect that Apple will release the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max later this year, we don't expect there to be any more new iPhones before the end of the year. That means that the iPhone SE won't be updated in 2024, but a new report suggests that we won't have to wait another whole year for the updated iPhone SE to arrive.

We've been told to expect an updated iPhone SE with a new design for some time now, and it had been thought that the launch would coincide with the arrival of Apple's first in-house 5G modem. That's so far proven difficult for Apple to manage, but we're now being told that 2025 will be the year that Apple finally brings the iPhone SE 3 to market.

That's according to a report by The Information which claims that Apple intends to launch the handset next year while matching previous rumors that Apple intends to ditch the Home button and Touch ID, finally, and replace the current model with a design that closely matches that of the iPhone 14.